Visa, MasterCard near settlement on interchange fees, WSJ reports

Visa (V) and Mastercard (MA) are near a settlement with merchants that would end a longstanding legal dispute by lowering fees stores pay and giving them more power to reject certain credit cards, AnnaMaria Andriotis of Wall Street Journal reports, citing people familiar with the matter. Under the terms being discussed, Visa and Mastercard would lower credit card interchange fees, which are often between 2% and 2.5%, by an average of around 0.1 percentage point over several years, sources told the Journal. The card makers would also loosen rules that require merchants that accept one of a network’s credit cards to accept all of them, the people added.